Marielle's catchup blog - about the 20July.

Well Dean has rambled on and on about his shower experience tonight so I have decided to update you on what we've been up to.
The last time I blogged, I left off when we were goint to drive down to South Hampton. The next 3 days or so are going to be very brief because I actually can't remember everything, as we have stopped at so many places. SO here goes.
Tuesday night - Haven't got a clue where we stayed!!!
On Wednesday we went to Portsmouth and went to the Historic dockyard. This was a lot of fun especially the tour on the HMS Victory. This is the ship on which Lord Nelson died during the battle of Trafalgar. The kids enjoyed this day out. We also went on a ferry ride around the harbour. Later that day we were once again on the hunt for a place to sleep. We eventually found a little farm in a place called Chichester. It was just an open field but we had electricity so that was good.
On Thursday we had decided to drive through The New Forest. This was beautiful and we would recommend it to anyone. Lining the roads were cows and sheep and horses all living as one happy family. I must say that the cows were very bold and promptly came right up to the van and just stared at us. We were able to get out the van and sit about 1m away from the cows. We were a bit nervous at first until we saw a little old lady walking amongst the cows with her little dog.
On Thursday night we parked the van at another CL - Sorry can't remember where! . In the morning, we decided to empty our toilet but this was easier said than done. The waste "bin" was not the same as the ones we are used to (normally you can just drive over them and empty your bin directly into the ground), this one was slightly elevated off the ground, so we had the problem of having to find something to lay on the ground that Dean could drive onto in order to make the van higher. Well this never worked. It had rained a lot the night before and as Dean tried to reverse, the tyres spun round and round and the harder he tried to either go backwards and forewards he just kept on sinking deeper. So he says to me - can I please go to the back of the van and push!!!! I stared at him open-mouthed but decided I had better do what he says - of course my attempts were futile. We eventually decide that I am going to push from the front and Jesse and Tanner jump out to help. We manage to push the van back and then quickly jump out the way so that Dean can accelerate forward. Well we never got to dispose of the contents of our toilet that day.
We found a CL to stay the night on Friday night in a place called Brockenhurst.. Unfortunately we could not have electricity for the night as these sites were all taken up. It poured with rain and we were pretty much housebound or should I say Car-bound.
Dean woke up at 6am in the morning and drove from Chichester to Weston-Super-Mare.By now I was desperate to do some washing in a machine and NOT by hand so I insist on sleeping in a proper camping site for the night. We make our way to one and are told that they have no hardstands left and cannot accommodate us because the ground is too mushy. After our experience the day before, we don't argue but they are kind enough to let us go in and use the laundry facilities. This takes about 2 hrs in total and about R75.00 later I come out smiling with clean and dry laundry.
We finally make our way to Bristol which is bringing us closer to our destination which is Bath.
In the last 6 days we have stayed at a different place each night, with last night being the first time we have chosen to stay in the same place for 2 nights. I guess I kinda insisted on this as the moving about each day was getting a bit tiring especially for Jetan as this has really intereferred with any routines. Okay to go back a bit...
Yesterday we arrived in a part of Bristol called Weston.... We found a CL here called Gorselands (this is a cheaper version of a campsite and you can camp here if you are part of the Caravan Club. Still pricey at 10 pounds a night but much better than spending 22 - 30 pounds in a caravan parkThis is a nice CL as it does have a toilet/shower block as you would have already heard about in Dean's blog which he has just posted tonight.
Today we woke up at about 9:30am - terrible I know!!! and Dean made us scrambled eggs and bacon - (I guess we can expect some snow very soon). At about 1:30pm we decided we had better visit a bit of this town. We headed towards the beach and found a parking. Overseas you pay for ALL parking, even if it is not covered parking. This one today cost us 1 pound per hour - that's R15.00!!! When we were in the Netherlands, someone complained that they had to pay 20cents (R2.00 per hour) for parking. Well they would get a big shock if they came to the U.K BUT at least in the U.K. the jolly toilets don't cost an arm and a leg like they do in the Netherlands. Anyway back to today..... The parking we found already had quite a few camper vans parked but boy were they GORGEOUS vans. Some of them looked like a hotel on wheels.
We took a walk to what they call the Grand Pier. This pier was lovely and the tide was about 300-400 m out. Will ask Dean to upload pics of today. We spent a few hours walking around and eventually came home - well that's a joke, HOME was parked in the parking lot :) Decided to cook a decent supper at about 7:30 pm and now all our little "angels" are fast asleep. It is now 1am and Dean and I are both sitting with our Pc's playing catch up.
Tomorrow we need to empty our loo (proving to be rather difficult if not staying in a caravan park) and then we head for Bath and thereafter Cardiff in Walesnand by Thursday we will be making our way back up to Stockton-on-Tees. Need to be there by Friday for Sam's bridal shower.